a reunion of friends and memories…

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This Friday night was my mission reunion. When you go on an LDS mission, there are reunions held semi-annually for the first few years after your mission president gets back. Well, it’s been more than a few years, in fact it’s been seven since I got home and 10 years since my mission president and his wife first arrived in Geneva to take over the mission for three years (that’s how long mission presidents serve).

Megen, Trina, me, Mandy and Mandy’s cute baby. Megen was the first sister I met after arriving in Switzerland. We went out in Geneva to talk to people on the street. And now, almost eight years later, here we are.

It was so fun. Obviously, not everyone is able to come out to Salt Lake for a reunion, but there were quite a few people there. It was fun to see people I hadn’t seen in years and to see how their families had grown. One of my favorite Elders (that’s what we call the male missionaries) was there and I was excited to meet his wife, who also served in the Geneva Switzerland mission, but after my time. It was fun to meet the spouses of the missionaries I knew and to see how well they all married…their spouses are fabulous. And I’m sure my opinion isn’t biased by the fact that a few of them said such nice things about me. I love unexpected compliments from people I don’t know well. Wait; are those the only people who give me compliments? Hmmm, what does that say about me?

One of my favorite things was just sharing the fun stories from the mission, as well as hearing about how people in the mission are doing. I definitely want to be better about keeping in touch with people…both missionaries and my friends in Switzerland and France.

Anyway, the following are some of the pictures I took (I took a lot because I wanted to make sure that my mission president had pictures of everyone…but I won’t bore you with all of them).

Me and Lindsey Spendlove…my second companion. We were together for three months in Lyon, France. She’s absolutely fabulous!

Elder and Sister Ralph were one of the sets of senior missionaries with whom I was able to serve. They kept all of our apartments and furniture in happy, working order.

That is my mission president, Rex Allen, talking to a couple of people from the mission. I don’t know either of them as they served before I did.

And this is Sister Allen (with Michelle and Mandy). She is absolutely fantastic. She was our mom away from our real moms…and because I lost my mom a few years before my mission, it was really fun to have a mom there who worried about me as much as my own mother would have…and she still does.

The Sillitos…he served in my mission, she went to Belgium and they are just fun people. We had some great laughs, both on the mission and Friday night.

And this is Marianne and Steve Jackson with their oldest daughter. Steve kept me laughing throughout the mission. I was lucky enough to be in two different areas with him. While on the mission, he and one of his companions made this hilarious video on one of our preparation days. I laughed soooo hard when I watched it. I was telling his wife about this (she also served in the mission) and she said, “Yeah, when Steve showed that to me, I thought, ‘That is the stupidest thing I have ever seen,’ and his response was, ‘Well, Soeur Andersen thought it was funny.'” Hmmm, once again, what does that say about me?

Bobbi (Freeman) and Mark Edwards; she was my companion for two months in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland…in the dead of winter with meters of snow. I’m not sure how we managed. And the others are two of the Allen’s children, Andrew (I think) and Angela. They wer just little kids when we were out there, and now Angela is almost 21. Oh, the joys of getting older.

the birth of another blog…

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I was reading my friend, Sarah’s, blog today and she had this great picture of a red velvet cupcake. She found the picture here. So, I went to the link. It is a “foodie” blog. Well, I consider myself a foodie. Not quite like these people (really, you should take a tour of all of the blogs that are listed on the one where she found the picture…they are incredible), but I love to cook and dream of someday going to culinary school.

Now, granted, I am an amature (both in baking and blogging) and I do not have the time to create a blog as beautiful as this (nor the photographer to make my food look like the picture to the left), but I do love food. So I got to thinking, wouldn’t it be great to have a place online, that we could all access, where we know the family recipes live on? Part of my desire is also in a hope that we will never again lose a family recipe. (Sadly, my mother took her pizza sauce recipe to the grave and none of us have been the same since.)

So, I created a blog all about food. It’s a team blog, so that all of my sisters and sisters-in-law can post to it, as well. How fun is that? (No, I’m not sexist, but I know my brothers well enough to know that, even if they decided they wanted to post something, their wives would be the ones to actually do it.)

I have to admit that I am pretty excited about this. Someday, I will probably go to culinary school as it has always been a dream (after I finish my MBA and pay off the student loans from that and have enough money saved to sustain me through the process), but for now, this will be my own little motivation to improve my skills, even if I do currently have the smallest kitchen known to man and most of my fabulous kitchen tools are trapped in storage.

the dilemma of the Cadbury Mini Eggs…

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Cadbury Mini Eggs have to be one of my most favorite candies. I love them. I think part of my obsession is the limited availability of said eggs. They only come out at Easter. My sister, Alicia, is the one who got me totally hooked. She’s worse than I am. She buys bags and bags, hoping to make them last throughout the year…but they never do. We have a similar problem with Mint M&M’s (thank you, Allison), but it’s not quite so bad.

So, this morning I decided to Google them (the mini eggs). I learned a few things. I didn’t know that Hershey made them, but they do. Hershey acquired the rights to manufacture and sell Cadbury chocolates in the U.S. in 1988. Did you know that Cadbury Creme Eggs were created in the 1920’s? I’m not sure when the littlest chocolate eggs of love came into existence, but it was a good year, whenever it was.

So, where is the dilemma in all of this? I’ve got a candy jar at my desk…and there’s one at the reception desk. I recently filled mine with mini eggs because if I put them in the other jar, they are gone in about 5 minutes. My reasoning worked. The little nuggets of goodness haven’t disappeared as quickly as they did last week. People don’t naturally look on my desk for candy (I added the jar when I took the position, whereas the other jar has always been there), and so it does last longer…the problem is I eat the majority of them. I don’t know what the solution is. I’ve considered just buying the mini packs and keeping them at home. That way there is a limited quantity and I seem to be better with those, except then I wouldn’t have them at work and that would be sad. I could have individual packages at work, but then I would feel greedy.

Really, I think I have found the only possible solution. I will have to sacrifice my waistline for the good of all. I am so kind. People are lucky to work with me.

And these are the people who will be leading us into the future…

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Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays.These excerpts are published each year for the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are last year’s winners…..

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse, without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

life lessons from my dad…

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I am currently living at home. Well, I need to qualify that a little. My dad has a studio apartment over his garage and that is where I currently reside. I have my own little kitchenette (little being the operative word) and bathroom and entrance (although I do have to go through the garage). When I left Arizona in May of last year, quitting my job and renting out my house, it was under the assumption that I was getting married and would be living with my new husband. So, when I called off the wedding, I found myself homeless, jobless and in quite a bit of debt (moving across the country twice and not working for four months will do that to a person). That is how I ended up here, in my dad’s house, living over his garage.

What I’ve discovered is that, as long as I am living in Provo (which I may be for a while if I decide to go to BYU for graduate school), living at home is fantastic. It makes the most sense financially. I’m not in the house, and so I have all of the privacy I want and I don’t have to play roommate roulette, but I have all of the benefits of living in a nice, big house, because I can go in it anytime I want. Not only that, but I have really enjoyed being able to get to know my dad better. He’s really funny…which brings me to what prompted this posting.

Yesterday, I got home from running in the Rex Lee Run to find that my dad wasn’t home. I called his cell phone to see where he was and he told me he was getting his car washed (a regular Saturday activity). Well, I’m broke (more broke than I have ever been…and the question you are all asking is “How is that possible when you are living at home?”…a post for another day) and I’m out of gas, so I asked him if I could meet him down there so that he could put gas in my car. I knew what the response would be, but I thought I’d ask, just the same.

As expected, he said no, but then he told me that if I was ever in real trouble, he’d help me out. I am in real trouble, but only because of my own stupidity and explaining that to my dad would be more painful than a root canal with no anesthetic. So I was especially grateful when he followed that comment with, “If you’d like to earn some money, there’s some yard work that you can help me with.” Sweet deal. My dad’s going rate for yard work is $10 and hour. Three hours of work and I’d have enough money to fill my tank. I get to live at home, virtually rent free (I do pay a little, so he can tell his wife I’m paying rent) and my dad provides me with jobs so I can make extra money. I’m a lucky, lucky girl.

My dad could have just purchased a tank of gas for me yesterday, but what would that have taught me? He is very wise…despite his age. He does not believe in free handouts (or free loans…the going interest rate on a loan from the Bank of Nev is 7%, but I don’t qualify due to a poor credit history), not because he couldn’t give me the money or because he’s stingy, but because he knows that working for what you have makes you a much happier, more confident person, even if it is doing yard work for $10 an hour.

So today, I’m very sunburned, very sore (yard work and running), have a couple of blisters, $40 less poor and in possession of my dignity. Not to mention the QT with my dad, which I always enjoy, including (and especially) the stupid jokes he tells.